Top 15 Scaling Green Posts of 2015

As we’re sure you are aware, 2015 has been a busy, and very exciting, year for clean energy. Here at Scaling Green, we’ve been excited to cover it all, from start to finish. We’re also very interested to know what our readers found most intriguing. With that, here are the top 15 Scaling Green blog posts of 2015, based on number of views. Thanks for reading Scaling Green in 2015, and we very much look forward to another great year for clean energy in 2016!

Faced with Plummeting Price of Clean Energy, Fossil Fuel Interests Double Down on Discredited Arguments (“The bottom line is that the fossil fuel industry simply doesn’t have any serious arguments at this point, which is why they cling so tightly both to their government subsidies and also to the discredited falsehoods they’ve been trotting out for years. Meanwhile, renewable energy just keeps growing, falling in price, bringing clean power and sustainable economic growth to hundreds of millions around the world — all with far less government support than fossil fuels receive. Keep that in mind the next time you read an op-ed by Thomas Pyle, Jack Gerard, or one of the many other fossil fuel industry flacks out there.”)

Communication is Key to Build a Movement to Save the World (“The solution is clear: we need to decarbonize the global economy. The technologies to do it in the energy and transportation sectors are ready, and they are rapidly scaling up. Unfortunately, fossil fuel industrialists are actively doing everything they can to block this progress that disrupts their parasitic business model. These obstructionists are all that stand between us and a clean energy future, and it will take a movement to overcome them.”)

Clean Power Plan Success Hinges on Winning the “Race to Define” (“That means we’ll have to not only cite credible studies and use credible experts, but we’ll have to get our hands dirty with the necessary task of calling out fossil fuel rhetoric and questioning the funding sources of the mouthpieces the fossil fuel lobby. And we have to have tight disciplined messaging that sells our paradigm to a country that wants us to succeed.”)

Media Interviews: The 7 Deadly Sins (“What makes a media interview unsuccessful? Failing to build and deliver effective, messages and/or not understanding the media— can all hurt your credibility. It’s so important to learn the ins and outs of media interviews and adopt best practices that will put your brand’s best foot forward. In this post, we specifically highlight what not to do in media interviews.”)

Nevadans Demonstrate Strong Support for Rooftop Solar: Will State Leaders Listen? (“It’s increasingly clear that renewable energy solutions, like rooftop solar, are the future of our energy supply. Students know it, community leaders know it, and the 6,000 solar employees living in Nevada definitely know it. The city of Las Vegas recently acknowledged this trend, and committed to source 100% of its power from renewable source, beginning in 2017. Vote Solar and Nevadans of all walks of life are now looking to state regulators at the PUCN, and the elected officials who direct them to invest in the state’s clean energy resources.”)

Jigar Shah, Raj Pannu on Clean Energy as Quintessentially American – “can-do, right-now, yes ma’am” (“But ironically, for a country which prides itself on its embrace of market forces, it’s government policy – kept in place largely by politicians who receive large campaign contributions from the dirty energy industry – overriding the free market and tilting the playing field in favor of fossil fuels, which has slowed the (inevitable) adoption of clean energy in our country. Today, it’s time for those politicians to get out of the way, remove the massive implicit and explicit subsidies from the fossil fuel industry, and let it compete mano a mano with “rugged, resilient, and tough” solar and wind. That’s a battle we’re confident we can win.”)

Chris Mooney Highlights Two New DOE Reports on the “U.S. wind energy boom” (“Overall, these reports deliver highly encouraging news when it comes to the U.S. wind power industry, and as Chris Mooney points out, that news “couldn’t be coming at a better time.” Now, the challenge will be for federal and state policymakers to ensure a favorable policy environment for continued growth in abundant, clean, increasingly inexpensive wind power in the years to come.”)

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In sum, the future looks extremely bright for clean energy, and for cleantech more broadly. The question isn't whether these sectors will grow rapidly, but simply how rapidly they'll grow. On that, we'd argue that EIA is far too conservative (or pessimistic, if you prefer), while BNEF is quite possibly too conservative as well, although they appear to be much closer to the mark than EIA's typically bearish-on-renewables, bullish-on-fossil-fuels forecasts.

According to a new report by the Energy Storage Association (ESA) and GTM Research, the U.S. energy storage industry is on fire, having just "deployed 71 MW of energy storage in Q1 2017...up 276% from the 18.9 MW deployed in Q1 2016," and with a lot more growth on the way.

See below for video of Chris Brown of Vestas, keynoting the opening session on day two of WINDPOWER 2017, concluding today in Anaheim, CA. According to Brown, who is completing his tenure as Chair of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the next five years will be the "best five years of your life" for the wind power industry.

But wind and other major cleantech sectors rely on distribution-only or distribution-mostly strategies that leave most of the marketing communications (“marcom”) power of these tools on idle. This year, we looked at why that happens. A few external drivers explain a lot.